Tropical Snow

Boy am I glad today’s over. This morning we had our second exam of the semester in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (GFD), and it wasn’t pretty. I mean, it’s not like we had our hopes set on anything higher than maybe doing well enough to eke out a passing grade, but it’s still no fun when those expectations come true. The test questions were fair for the most part (although on one of the questions worth 15% I was absolutely clueless, in addition to another one worth 5% – both were basically left blank), but it was far too long for a 60-minute exam, that was intended to be only 50 minutes. Time constraints prevented me from figuring out how to do another problem worth 10%, and from finding my errors in another 10-pointer that I knew I biffed. Basically, my maximum possible score is somewhere in the 65-70% range, and that’s only if I didn’t have any other errors in the stuff I was able to complete. I was pretty upset during and after the test, partly because yesterday she had said she was worried that the test was “too easy.” We’re wondering if she re-wrote it… Anyway, most of us have created a pool to guess what the class mean (average) score for this test will be. I’m guessing a 55, and the guesses are ranging from 44-61, with the overall average of the guesses being around a 57 or so. Interestingly, I think everyone so far is placing their guess for their own score below their guess for the class average. Thank goodness there’s only one more test in that class (Nov 30th), and that after that we won’t have the class at all because Dr Evans will be going back to Australia for a conference or something.
Yesterday, despite studying for the GFD test all day, was actually kinda fun. Why? Because it snowed for the first time this season! Right before I left my apartment for class in the morning the rain started switching over to snow, so that I got absolutely soaked with a frigid wintry mix on my way to Walker. (Note to self: a rain jacket that’s actually waterproof like advertised will cause all the water to run down onto your jeans and shoes, making you very cold and miserable when the temperature’s near freezing.) Anyway, after some initial indecision on the part of the weather, it decided to snow the rest of the daytime, which was awesome. All told we got about an inch or an inch and a half of wet, slushy snow. I called it tropical snow because the low pressure system that had moved in from the Great Lakes to give us some precipitation was being infused with heaps of tropical moisture from the remnants of Hurricane Wilma. This was an unusually early snowfall for State College, missing the record for earliest accumulating snowfall by just one day. And even though I wish it would’ve been at least a couple of degrees colder so that it would’ve been more snow and less slush, it was still beautiful to see all the heavy wet snow sticking to the trees that still had their fall foliage out. On my way back to Walker from teaching my lab in the morning, I was so excited I just had to go out and take some pictures.
A few of us hearty northeners were really pumped up to see snow again, so Kerrie, Amber & I decided to drag Daniel outside around lunchtime to go play in the snow (Amber & Kerrie wanted a snowball fight and I wanted to take a bunch of pictures), since he’s from way down in the Deep South. He said that in Huntsville, his hometown, they’d get a little slushy snow like this once a year, but never down in Mobile where he went to undergrad, so this was the first time he’d seen snow in about five years. Kerrie (who’s from Boston) was even teasing Daniel by referring to central PA as being “the south,” hehe. In Rad Tran this morning Dr Clothiaux (who’s also from Alabama originally, an Auburn alum) asked the class who liked and who hated yesterday’s weather, and when Daniel didn’t raise his hand for either, Eugene was shocked (because he still hates it, even though he’s been here for years) and asked why. Daniel said he didn’t hate it “yet” because it was still a novelty to him. But that’s progress from initially yesterday morning when he said the weather was “appalling.” I think we’re gonna turn him into a snow-lovin’ yankee yet. 🙂
Side note: I’ve discovered the best place to grab lunch in State College, on Tuesdays at any rate. The Sports Cafe has wings for 25c each, and they’re muy delicioso! And the Hot BBQ sauce is the absolute perfect balance of taste and spice. I know the majority of you who are reading this won’t ever be in State College, but if you find yourself here in Happy Valley some Tuesday in the misty distant future, the Sports Cafe is the place to be.
And there’s been plenty of strange and odd news in the last couple days, a virtual plethora. First, USA Today doctored a photo of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice so that she would look like she was possessed. In Dallas a cab driver was arrested for spreading fecal matter on pastries in a grocery store. I guess next time you buy a pastry with sprinkles on it, make sure it was intended to have sprinkles… Along those same lines, a teenager in Michigan has been arrested and faces potentially 10 years for putting a loogie in a state trooper’s turkey wrap at an Arby’s drive-thru late one night. And the Guinness Book of World Records has confirmed that a California woman owns the world’s tallest dog, a seven-foot tall Great Dane! Now that’s a big dog! The sight of a dog that huge still probably wouldn’t be quite as much of a shock as discovering an 11-foot long python curled up in an Iowa cornfield. I think that makes me officially eliminate Iowa as a potential place where I might live someday, hehe. Now for world news. In London a Japanese artist was paid about $9,000 to drink beer and fall off a plank. Those crazy Brits… In India an astrologer survived predicting his own death. Not a smooth move if you want people to believe your predictions down the road. And finally, I guess I was fortunate while I was driving around in Australia not to get struck by a bullet that was intended for a cow. I’m sorry, but if you can’t hit a cow, which isn’t exactly the swiftest of animals, you probably shouldn’t be shooting a gun.
Well, I’m gonna go drown my sorrows about the GFD test in Cherry Coke. That or doing corrections to my Rad Tran exam. Sigh.